ICI Magazine 1961-03

The ICI Magazine , price twopence, is published for
the interest of all who work in ICI, and its contents
are contributed largely by people in ICI. Edited by
Sir Richard Keane, Bt., and printed at The Kynoch
Press, Birmingham, it is published every month by
Imperial Chemical Industries Limited, Imperial
Chemical House, Millbank, London, S.W.i (Phone:
Victoria 4444). The editor is glad to consider articles
and photographs for publication, and payment will be
made for those accepted.

VOLUME 39 NUMBER 291

The ICI Magazine

MARCH 1961

Contributors

Contents

J. E. Davies, ICI Taxation Controller ,
describes himself as “a fallen chemist”
Having taken arts subjects to
intermediate degree standard he
changed to science , taking honours in
chemistry and becoming an Associate
of the Royal Institute . He forsook
chemistry for Inland Revenue and
became Inspector of Taxes . He made
a partial recovery in 1929 and
joined ICI Taxation and Rating
Section , becoming its head in 1938 and
generally responsible for ICI taxation
affairs. He has been Taxation
Controller since 1943.

Derek Clements is a member of
the Overseas Department of Paints
Division. Before joining ICI he
spent two years as a national
serviceman flying Meteor jets , where
he won the Broughton Trophy at
Flying Training School. He then went
up to Oxford , where he read zoology
and rowed for his college. Interests
include archaeology , and collecting
stamps and crested silver spoons .

He is also a member of the Royal
Observer Corps and president of the
Paints Division Amateur Film Unit.

Tamos Taylor as ICI Group E
Director and chairman of
Yorkshire Imperial Metals , the
Imperial Aluminium Company and
Associated Light Metal Industries.

Bonds, Pools and Prosperity, by Mark Abrams 75
The Ilford Challenge in Colour Photography,

by the Editor 76

People and Events 82

Dr. Cecil Cronshaw—an appreciation,
by Clifford Paine 87

Mr. Leonard Armstrong—an appreciation,
by E. A . Bingen 88

Seed Sowing, by Percy Thrower 89

Information Notes:

Vortex Down Under, by James Taylor 90

Taxation and Common Sense, by j. & Davies 92
One Man and his Job—‘Drikold’ Expert 94

News in Pictures 96

We Don’t Watch—We Play,
by Denzil Batchelor 100

Forgotten Waterways, by D. J. M. Clements 104

front cover: Waterfall on Coniston Fells
in the Lake District , by C. B. Chilton
formerly of Cassel Works , Billingham

C Dacora Dignette, Kodachrome film. 1/50 sec. af/63)

POINT of VIEW

BONDS, POOLS AND PROSPERITY

By Mark Abrams

it some time or other every
post-war British government
1 . Vhas attempted to check private
expenditure on consumption. It was
argued that if consumers would hold
back for a while a larger proportion of
our resources could be used for pro¬
ducing capital equipment, and this in
its turn would eventually lead to a
greater output of goods and services
to be enjoyed by the ordinary house¬
hold.

For the most part, governments have
depended on taxation and credit res¬
trictions to bring about this restraint
on the part of the consumer, but in
1956 something novel was attempted.
In that year Premium Bonds were
launched, and it was hoped that
through this national lottery it would
be possible to bribe people to spend a
little less on consumption.

In the first full year of the scheme the
average British family invested slightly
over £4 in the bonds. But apparently
the certainty of never losing your
“stake” money and always standing a
chance to win a small prize held little
attraction for the man in the street.
Throughout 1959 the takings of the
lottery organiser (i.e. the State) fell
steadily. Accordingly, last April changes
were announced so as to offer people a
more exciting gamble: larger prizes,
more prizes, and a shorter period to
wait between buying a bond and taking
part in the draw for prizes. The
results so far can hardly be described
as a spectacular success. For the
second half of i960 the net investment
in Premium Bonds by the average
British family amounted to approxi¬

mately 36 shillings; in other words, the
whole 17 million families between
them had been induced during the
half-year to save £30 million in the
form of Premium Bonds. At this stage
in the nation’s finances any holding
back by consumers is to be welcomed,
but figures of this order are not likely
to solve the problems of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer.

And their modesty is all the more
disappointing when one considers what
has been happening to the nation’s
privately run lotteries—i.e. the foot¬
ball pools. These have gone from
success to success. In 1956 the average
British family sent off to the pools—
either directly or through a syndicate
—slightly over £4; in 1959 this rose to
nearly £6. There was a further increase
in i960, and during that year punters
“invested” well over £100 million in
“backing” their coupons.

From the Chancellor’s point of view
this particular boom is fine. Thanks to
the Betting Duty, the football pools
this financial year will transfer about
£35 million from the pockets of private
consumers to the coffers of the Trea¬
sury. Then the Post Office skims off a
few million pounds (for handling all
those postal orders), and the promoters
take their share. So that, all in all,
when punters put £100 million on the
football pools about half that amount is
withdrawn from their pockets and
ceases to be spent by them on con¬
sumption goods. From this point of
view the football pools do a far better
job for the Chancellor of the Exchequer
than do Premium Bonds—and they
have the additional advantage that he

does not have to give the punters back
their money.

To the non-punter it may seem
strange that people should prefer pools
to bonds; the former offer the cer¬
tainty of losing half your money and
the very slight possibility of winning
an enormous prize; the latter offer the
certainty that all your money will be
returned to you, plus the slight pos¬
sibility of winning a modest prize.
Some psychologists have offered an
explanation for this particular piece of
human irrationality. They claim that
punters in filling up a pool coupon are
under the delusion that their skill as
experts on football form materially
affects their chances of winning.
Nothing, in fact, is further from the
truth and indeed recent publicity about
winners who boasted of their ignorance
should help to shatter this delusion
where it still exists.

It seems to me more likely that they
enjoy the excitement of gambling on
sheer luck—especially when this is
linked with small stakes and the fre¬
quent announcement of a few huge
prizes.

If this is so, perhaps the time has come
either for the Government to en¬
courage private football pools ener¬
getically or else to modernise Premium
Bonds so that the State National
Lottery could really be used effectively
to siphon off consumers’ spending
power. We could then start to cope
with our inflation and export crises by
having the man in the street hand over
more and more of his money cheer-
fully and even eagerly to the
Government.

The opinions expressed in this article
are not necessarily those of the Company

75

THE ILFORD CHALLENGE i n COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

New

colour film process

now in full swing

By the Editor

This spring the first fruits of the ICI-Ilford tie-
up will be seen. Ilford’s new colour film, based
on ICI’s research, is now freely available and
promises colour prints as good as (some say
better than) any yet produced. Here is the
story of this major development called Ilfacolor.

Colour Illustrations by Michael Leonard

I T is something rather special: the new Ilfacolor
film, which last year—in small quantities—for the
first time became available to the public, and which
this year with the Ilford laboratories geared up to a
higher capacity is on sale in unlimited supplies.

Already two out of every nine photographs taken
in Britain are in colour. Most of these—over three-
quarters—are colour transparencies, cumbersome to
look at and demanding special equipment for showing
at their best. How much easier to look at colour
prints! If only (people said) they were good enough,

the tones accurate enough, the values true enough.
This is just what the new Ilfacolor has achieved. It
gives a negative from which colour prints can be
reproduced in quantity, with colour values every bit
as realistic as those of the single transparency.

This marked advance did not come about overnight,
as the result of a flash of inspiration on the part of
some dome-headed hero of a science-fiction film. It
was the culmination of years of effort by the research
departments of Ilford and ICI, and—most important
of all—the result of the link-up between these

companies in August 1958. The history of the period
of experiment shows that Ilford was producing the
colour transparency film twelve years ago, while ICI
has been working for the past fourteen years on the
colour-negative film, which they first marketed for
professional photographers as recently as 1958. Since
the link-up, Ilford has taken over the manufacture and
marketing of the ICI type of film.

ICTs struggle to perfect colour prints began as a
challenge to the Agfacolor technique of the mid¬
forties. Agfa—their methods have advanced techni¬
cally since then—concentrated on producing pictures
using a simple “unmasked” negative film. The ques¬
tion arose: to mask or not to mask ? Was it necessary
to use masks, those aids to colour blending, those recti¬
fiers of the deficiencies of work done by
available dyestuffs ?*

ICI decided it was. Masks were
needed if a reasonable degree of
accuracy of colour reproduction was to
be attained. But the trouble was that
Kodak had made the same decision and
already had a useful start in work along
the same lines. Nevertheless ICI stuck
to its decision; and it should be noted
that not only do Kodak and Ilford use
built-in colour masks today, but that
they are the only two firms in the world
to adopt this technique. And today Ilfa¬
color shines forth as the triumphant jus¬
tification of this policy. It is as good as,
some say better than, any other colour

* “Masking” is a word of scientific jargon
commonly used in the colour film world. It is
a label that covers a complicated process of
colour correction, in this case additions to the
light-sensitive emulsions coated on the film.

There are three layers of emulsion, each sensi¬
tive to a different range of colours.

film sold in Britain. It shows that with a great
research team on the job a good start is not the begin¬
ning and end of a race.

Research, of course, into the highly sophisticated
chemical problems of colour emulsions costs a great
deal of time and money. But the pay-off may be just
round the corner. Big stocks of Ilford film have now
been built up, and a full-scale advertising campaign is
being launched in the spring. Half-page advertise¬
ments in the national press will soon make their im¬
pact. Ilfacolor is the answer to the ordinary man’s
wish for a colour photograph, and there is no doubt
that Ilford are only on the threshold of a big expanding
market.

The ordinary man may be forgiven if sometimes, in

76

77

Correct chemical composition of processing solutions is a basic essential for producing high-quality colour pictures.
As the solutions are used, they change chemically, and these changes have to be compensated. Samples are taken to the
laboratory at regular intervals to ensure that replenishment has kept the solutions up to scratch

a very human way, he is inclined to believe that he is
discriminated against when the youngest daughter’s
portrait of Aunt Augusta somehow lacks the subtle
colour blending of the Mona Lisa or the light and
shade effects of an early Rembrandt. You have surely
met the know-all type who informs you that the pro¬
cessing people can manage the basic colours all right—
skies are blue, roses are red, and fleshtints are Aunt
Augusta to the life—but they haven’t quite learned
how to master the pastel shades. Well, in some ways
he is right, in some ways wrong. The reproduction of

delicate tones is and always will be a challenge to the
processing department. Their answer to the problem
rests basically on the most careful control of variables
like temperature, processing times, solution composi¬
tion, and other more complicated factors.

But the brash know-all ought to go to see that
department at work, for his own sake. There he
would discover that care is taken to ensure that if he
has taken a good picture it emerges at its best; while
if he has taken a bad picture it is at least as good a bad
picture as science can make it.

A key man is the process worker responsible for mixing the chemicals of processing
solutions correctly. His work is in turn checked by the chemical control laboratory

78

Control bridge. Keeping a careful watch on the control instruments, this process worker checks
solution temperatures and rates of solution flow. If they are wrong, he makes the necessary adjustments

79

Colour transparencies are also handled at Ilford’s
Basildon Laboratories. They are here being fed into an
automatic mounting machine

Mark well, a colour-film processor cannot control
his work by looking at the picture that will emerge in
the end. He cannot know what hardships may have
been suffered by the layers of green, red and blue
emulsions (the light-sensitive coatings of the film)
which bring colour to the image; nor can he know the
details of the exposure. He can only make sure by the
use of a most elaborate set.of controls that a standar¬
dised exposure on a selected emulsion will yield the
best results possible from his processing technique.

Rotatory Routine

Watch him at work: one set of controls ensures that
every Ilfacoloi negative gets the proper treatment;
another that the paper for Ilfacolor prints is receiving
the attention it deserves.

Having checked the controls, the next step is to
watch the processing department at work. The
simple chemistry of producing a coloured picture
from a square inch of emulsion-coated celluloid has
remained much the same for the last 25 years. But
you have to know more science than the next man to
understand it at its simplest.

Those to whom scientific explanations read like
pure Chinese will note that film and print processing
is as rotatory a routine as, say, folding magazines or
cooking chickens on a revolving spit. Films are not
handled separately. They are stuck together in one
long length and sent on their way through the developer.

Checking the negatives as they come from the process¬
ing machine before being sent to the printing department

up the ramp to be dried off, separated, and printed for
the customer. There is one exception: roll films for
box cameras. With a thickness of three thousandths
of an inch they present special problems of fragility,
and are therefore given individual treatment in what is
known in refreshingly unscientific language as the
dunking machine.

So it goes: the moment your infant son took his
first steps at Eastbourne last week is perpetuated for
ever. Out it comes from the tank, to be dried and
printed: to be yours for ever—not just one trans¬
parency as in the reversal process, but a colour picture
to be printed again as often as you like.

The Future

For that is the challenge of Ilfacolor. With its
coming, the perpetuation of the mqihent, sweet as it
was fleeting, is brought nearer. It is, in its way, a
magic specific to prolong youth and happiness. And,
because it has this great potential, the future is
with colour photography. It will no doubt become
less costly as the years go by—today a colour print
is about four times as expensive as a black-and-white.
But every year more and more people are taking
colour photographs: already in America 40% of all
taken are in colour.

The importance of the Ilford challenge is that it
makes available to this country this newest and finest
form of colour photography at its highest potential.

80

Colour printing. Under subdued orange light this girl feeds a strip of negative into the printing machine. She presses a foot
switch, and the correct exposure is automatically made by means of photoelectric cells finked with a complicated electronic device

Drying colour prints on a heated rotary drum

j

Checking colour prints before cutting
and despatch to the customer

81

People

and events . . .

Developments in
Cheshire and the Argentine

A new factory for Pharmaceuticals Division in Cheshire and a ‘Terylene’
project in the Argentine were the subjects of the two main news releases
of the past weeks. Pharmaceuticals Division is to spend over £4 million in
the next few years on improving its research* production and distribution facilities.

Negotiations are in progress for a site
for a new factory at Macclesfield*
Cheshire, near Alderley Park Research
Laboratories. In due course some 2000
people will be employed at this factory.
The concentration of the Division’s
activities in Cheshire means that the
Linlithgow factory will have to be
closed in two or three years’ time.

‘Terylene’ in Argentina

he Company is also to proceed with
a£i £ million project to manufacture
‘Terylene’ polyester fibre in the Argen¬
tine. The proposal is that the plant
should be built by Duperial Argentina,
a subsidiary of ICI, at their new
industrial centre in San Lorenzo along¬
side the chemical and plastics plants
already under construction there. It
will be designed to have an initial
capacity of two million lb. This latest
project would bring ICI’s anticipated
investment at San Lorenzo over the next
three years up to almost £10 million.

Curtains for the Queen

he Ahmedabad office of ICI (India)
played a small but valuable part in
the preparations for the Queen’s recent
visit to that city. Refurbishing the
royal suite at Government House for
the occasion* the Governor’s wife, the
Begum Nawab Mehdi Jung* decided
to redye the magnificent brocade cur¬
tains to a rich magenta shade. The

★ ★ ★

work was entrusted to one of Dyestuffs
Division’s important customers* and
they in turn consulted ICI (India)’s
Ahmedabad office on the matter. As
a result* Mr. K. V. Dave had the
delicate task of redyeing the curtains to
the required shade. He used ICI
‘Procion’ dyes for the job and his work
met with the warm approval of the
Begum, who expressed her appreciation
of the service rendered.

Magadi Milestone

Cl’s outpost in Kenya, the Magadi

Soda Company, reached its golden
jubilee on 26th January. To mark the
occasion an entertainment was held at
Lake Magadi for the 3000 residents of
all races who live and work there. Our
correspondent reports that* anxious
not to miss any of the fun, the crowd
started to roll up two hours before the
show was due to begin.

This duly opened with a superb
display of formation flying and aero¬
batics by three RAF Hawker Hunters.
Other items included music from the
Kenya Police Band (who also beat
Retreat), conjuring by Mr. Jasper
Maskelyne, and a hair-raising act from
“Professor of Magic” K. H. Trevedi.
The Professor was buried four feet
deep in a pit under a great heap of

charcoal which with the aid of paraffin
was set merrily alight. To everyone’s
relief he successfully survived 15
minutes of this heat treatment.

After tea there was a spectacular
firework display, followed by dancing
to a section of the Police Band in the
African Members’ Club which was
kept up until the early hours of the
next morning.

On the evening of the 28th in
Nairobi a cocktail party was held at
the New Stanley Hotel, to which were
invited some 200 guests representing
many Government departments* the
railways* shipping, business houses
and the professions with which Magadi
has had close connections over the
years.

Crystal Lake

L ake Magadi is a vast natural store¬
house of alkaline crystals, 12 miles
long and 2 miles wide. Because it has
no outlet and the climate is so hot,
evaporation of the water occurs, leav¬
ing behind a solid, thick crust of
crystals, called trona, which is strong
enough to bear the weight of a man.
It is calculated to contain something
like 100 million tons iyi soda.

The first European™ set eyes on the
lake was a German explorer, Herr
Fischer, in 1883, but it was not until
1904 that Lake Magadi, by then in
British territory, was surveyed in de¬
tail. The Magadi Soda Company
came into being in 1911; but it had a
chequered career, caused in part by
competition from rival companies, in¬
cluding Brunner-Mond, and in 1923
the company went into liquidation. A
number of reconstruction schemes
were proposed, among them one spon¬
sored by Brunner-Mond. This was
ultimately adopted, and in 1924 the

82

PEOPLE

We announce with regret that Mr.
Stewart Leith, a director of AE & Cl
Ltd., died in Johannesburg on 20th
January. Mr. Leith was AE & CPs
technical liaison officer in London from
1946 to 1949.

It is announced with deep regret that
Mr. J. W. Simpson, chairman of ICI
(Pakistan) and of the Khewra Soda Co.,
died on 24th January in this country,
where he had been on sick leave since
last August.

Mr. Frank Scullion (Nobel Division)
has had two long service presentations
in recent months. One was his 30-year
Company award, the other a silver
award for 40 years’ membership of the
Sheet Metal Workers’ Union.

Mr. A. May, works engineer at General
Chemicals Division’s Chance and Hunt
Works, has been elected as one of six
laymen to represent the Birmingham
diocese in the House of Laity of the
National Assembly of the Church of
England.

Mr. Charles Brown, 47-year-old
fitter at Plastics Works, Billingham, has
been awarded £105 and Mr. Bill
Robinson, an electrical foreman in
Engineering Works Construction Sec¬
tion, £110 for ideas submitted under
the Company’s Suggestion Scheme. Mr.
Robinson’s award is the biggest yet
made at Billingham.

Mrs. Mace, a cartridge inspector in the
Cap Priming Department at Metals
Division, and her daughter have been
selected to swell the ranks of a choir
which will sing at the dedication of a
new Mormon church in London, in the
Albert Hall, and in halls and meeting¬
houses up and down the country. A
nucleus of members of the famous Salt
Lake City Tabernacle is coming to
Britain for the tour, the rest of the choir
have been picked from members of
British Mormon churches.

Two Derbyshire police teams who were
trained by Mr. Arthur Waring, a
Tunstead Quarry (Alkali) Division
employee, met with success in the recent
open first aid competition at Pontefract.
One team gained second place in the
team test, and the other won awards for
the best No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 in the
individual tests, in which 160 competed.

Mr. Bill Tyler, commissionaire at the
Castner-Kellner works of General
Chemicals Division for the past 14 years,
has retired after nearly 34 years’ service.
His portrait (painted in connection with
anICI advertising campaign in the 1940s,
“Portrait of an Industry”) has been
hung in the Royal Academy.

present company was formed with
Brunner-Mond as managers.

The largest single customer for
Magadi’s soda ash is the glass industry.
Around 150,000 tons is produced
annually, and most of it is exported.
About 2000 tons is sold locally for
glass manufacture, and a small quan¬
tity is used for cooking and for making
snuff.

Water Babies

ow to give swimming lessons to
35,000 schoolchildren when the
city has only two public swimming
baths was the problem confronting
Southampton’s Department of Educa¬
tion. They have solved it, for the
small children at least, by developing a
portable bath.

The bath consists of a single sheet of
ICI ‘Hydex’ pvc-coated nylon fabric
which is fitted into a steel frame. Two
people can erect it in 15 minutes ready
for filling with water. It measures
20 ft. x 10 ft. and is 3 ft. high, can be
emptied and dismantled in about 30
minutes, weighs 70 lb. and is light
enough for one person to carry, and
costs about £170.

Southampton Education Depart¬
ment tested a prototype of the bath in
1959 at one of their primary schools.
By the end of the season over 200 of
the 360 pupils could swim. Last year
they had four of the baths in con¬
tinuous use, and this summer they
hope to have one in all their primary
schools. (See pictures on page 97.)

Bouquet in Book Form

any readers will remember the
“Modem Marvels” series of ar¬
ticles we ran in the Magazine. At the
time it attracted a good deal of praise

from both inside and outside the
Company, and now there is even more
concrete evidence of its success. J. M.
Dent & Sons, the publishers, have
approached ICI seeking authority to
publish the articles in book form as a
commercial venture.

Permission has been given, and
publication is scheduled for the autumn.
Dents are giving full acknowledgment
to the Magazine as the source of the
material and have asked the Editor,
Sir Richard Keane, to contribute a
special foreword.

Incidentally, Sir Richard is also the
author of a Foreign Affairs “Special”
published some years ago by Penguins.

Fleck Award Winners

A s we announced briefly last month
The first four prizewinners under
the Fleck Award scheme have now
been named. They are Jeanne Mal-
linson (Dyestuffs Division), Gerald
Ramshaw (Metals Division), David
Sandick (Billingham Division) and
J. Eric Trembath (Nobel Division).

Miss Mallinson (18) is a clerk in the
Production Planning Department at
Huddersfield Works. She is a member
of the Yorkshire County netball team
and has represented Huddersfield for
the past three years in inter-town com¬
petitions. She has also recently quali¬
fied as a part time youth leader in
gymnastics and physical training.

Mr. Ramshaw (20) is a laboratory
assistant in the Research Labs at
Witton, and he is studying for the
Institute of Physics (graduate class)
examinations which he hopes to take
in 1964. Last year he won Metals
Division’s S. S. Smith award for
public speaking with a paper he pre¬
sented to the Research Department’s
Scientific Society entitled “Science
and Athletics.” He is a member of
Birchfield Harriers and was in the

BINDING OF 1960
MAGAZINES

The Kynoch Press has againagreed to
bind Magazines and inserts for those
readers who would like this done.

The cost will be 12s. 6d. for a
volume of Magazines or a volume of
inserts, and anyone who wants to
take advantage of this offer should
advise his Magazine correspondent
now.

83

Miss Mallinson Mr. Ramshaw Mr. Sandick Mr. Trembath

junior sprint relay team which gained
second place in the 1959 national
championships at the White City, and
he has also qualified as a Class II
football referee. On the less energetic
side his hobbies include photography
and music—he is an accomplished
pianist and has taken part in many
festivals and concerts in aid of charity.

★ ★ ★

Mr. Sandick (18) won the Billing-
ham award from a list of 33 candidates.
He is an apprentice fitter and is a
part time student at the Stockton-
Billingham Technical College, where
he is an active member of the students 5
union. He is a member of Billingham
Arts Association, a Sunday school
teacher at Greatham Parish Church,
and chairman of the Church’s youth
fellowship, of which he was a founder
member. He is also on Greatham s
Feast Committee organising the 500-
year celebrations which take place
later this year.

★ ★ ★

Mr. Trembath (20) is a final-year
apprentice fitter at Tuckingmill Fac¬
tory in Cornwall, which he joined in
1957. Two years ago he broke a leg
playing football for Helston Athletic
and was laid up for three months.
Despite this injury, which prevented
him from attending technical college,
by working at home he passed his
examinations for the Ordinary National
Certificate for Mechanical Engineering
the following summer. He is due to
sit his Higher National Certificate
next year and hopes to go on for his
A.M.I.Mech.E. He is on the commit¬
tee of the local Breage Institute and is a

member of the West Cornwall motor
and motor cycling club, for whom he
often acts as steward for rallies and
trials.

Unique VC

S orting out some old papers, Mr.

Frank Cass, who works in the
paint warehouse at Slough, came
across this picture. It was one he had
spotted in an old magazine discovered
in an army canteen in Eritrea during
the last war. He recognised the cen¬
tral figure. Lance-sergeant Oliver
Brooks, VC, as a former commis¬
sionaire at the famous White Hart
Hotel in Windsor. He cut the picture
out and sent it home to his wife,
thinking she might be interested.

Looking at it again nearly twenty
years later, he realised that the Ser¬
geant Brooks in the photograph was
the father of one of his workmates.

Mr. Douglas Brooks, and he took it
along to show it to him.

Mr. Brooks, who himself served in
his father’s old regiment, the Cold¬
stream Guards, in World War II, tells
us that his father was the only VC
who has ever received his award out¬
side Buckingham Palace. It happened
in October 1915, when King George
V, visiting the troops in France, was
thrown from his horse and severely
injured. While lying ill in the hospital
train he expressed a wish to present the
VC won at Loos by Brooks, who was
brought to his bedside for the ceremony.

£111 Idea

an Alkali Division road tanker
driver, Mr. Sam Thomas, found
himself more than £100 better olf just
before Christmas. And it was all
because he thought of a way of saving
himself and his workmates a lot of

A unique VC ceremony

84

ANCESTORS OF AN INDUSTRY—i

W. H. FOX TALBOT is universally acknowledged to have been the
father of modern photography. Though he did not take the first photo¬
graph, he invented the Calotype process , which made it possible for any
number of positives or “ prints ” to be made from a single negative. It is
on this process that all modem photography has been built .

Bom at Melbury in Dorset in 1800, Fox Talbot was a man with
remarkably wide interests. Though primarily a mathematician , a
subject in which he took an honours degree at Cambridge University in
1821, he was also a chemist , a botanist and a philologist. He spoke
fluent French , and could read German , Hebrew , Gaelic , Welsh , Polish ,
Wendish {an obscure Slavonic language) and Russian. With Sir Henry
Rawlinson he was a pioneer translator of the Assyrian cuneiform inscrip¬
tions. His mathematical attainments earned him the Fellowship of the
Royal Society in 1831, and he represented the Chippenham Division
of Wiltshire in the Parliament that passed the Reform Bill of 1832. In
1854 he threw open his patents on the Calotype process , taken out
fourteen years earlier , and thus initiated the developments which have
led from the daguerreotype to the great photographic industry of today.

trouble—and saving the Company
quite a bit of money at the same time.

Before taking on a fresh load of
caustic soda liquor at the weighbridge
on Winnington
Lane, the tankers
have to be cleaned
out with hot
water. This meant
a journey of
nearly a mile to
the water point at
Winnington
Weirhead. The
water at this point
was not always available when needed,
and often access to this point was
obstructed.

Mr. Thomas, who has been driving
tankers for the Division since 1936,
had the idea that if a hot water point
could be located near the weighbridge
where loading took place and where in
fact there was a steam main near at
hand, it would cut out the extra
mileage and delay.

When Mr. Thomas’s idea went
before the Division’s Suggestions Com¬
mittee with the support of his manager
the committee made an interim award
of £5 pending further investigation.

Figures were produced to show that
the adoption of the suggestion would
mean a saving to the Company of £222
a year. Although the management had
had under consideration at the time
ways of improving the method of
washing out tankers, the committee
decided that since Mr. Thomas had
come forward with a sound and prac¬
tical suggestion that was now being
implemented he had earned the full
award under the Scheme of £111.

Coloured Coppers?

T he part played by plastics in
industry, the home and everyday
life continues to grow, and news has
come now of yet another possible use—
coinage. In his annual report Mr. J. H.
James, deputy master and controller of
the Royal Mint, says the case for
plastics is quite a serious one.

There is little doubt that plastic
coins could be produced more cheaply
than the lowest face values, Mr. James
contends, and they would have advan¬
tages over metals in that they could

Mr. Thomas

85

be developed in a variety of colours.

Their lightness could be held to con¬
flict with the traditional conception
m of coins, but

v";. the practi¬

cal argu¬
ment of
convenience
might win
in the end.
A much
more tren¬
chant criti¬
cism, good
for higher
denomina¬
tions, would
be the rela¬
tive ease of
counter¬
feiting.

“If the

modern feeling on coins is only that
they should exist and be convenient,
a plastic token is surely an ultimate
answer—easy to carry, probably* du¬
rable, and very cheap to make. If
there remains a longing for some
intrinsic quality and value, where is the
outcry against a currency exclusively of
cupro-nickel, bronze, brass and paper ?’ 5

Drummed Out

A deafening hammering noise com¬
ing from the letterpress machine
section of The Kynoch Press on 3rd
January drew everyone’s attention to
the latest “drumming-out” ceremony.
The victim, David Darby, had just
completed his apprenticeship and has
done so well during his study that he is
already sitting for the final City and
Guilds examination, an achievement
few of his colleagues can claim in so
short a time.

The ceremony of drumming out a
printer’s apprentice is a centuries-old
custom, originating in the days when
printers were granted the privilege, by
Royal Assent, of wearing a sword.
What usually happens is that the
printer’s imp (apprentice) is called to
the Father of the Chapel accompanied
by loud drumming by his colleagues on
any available article. He is then
daubed with ink and chalk, presented
first with a snuff-box, then a sword,

* We would delete the word “probably.”

and then given a nickname. Finally he
is bundled into a trolley, run out of the
premises and spilled into the gutter to
denote that he has finished his appren¬
ticeship. He re-enters the building a
fully fledged journeyman.

Mr. Darby’s chief hobby is politics,
and in a few weeks’ time he is off to
Germany to attend the International
Youth Conference being held at
Sonnenberg.

Ancestors

e plan from time to time to
reproduce in these pages some of
the biographies of men of science of
the past which first appeared just after
the war in a famous series of ICI press
advertisements called “Ancestors of
an Industry.” They were later pub¬
lished in book form, and a new edition
was brought out last year. To start
with, since our leading article this
month is on Ilfords, the famous
photographic firm, we have picked
W. H. Fox Talbot (1800-77) ^e
“father of modern photography.”

Funds for Spastics

r. Jimmy Smith, a storeman
employed on Polythene works at
Wilton, has been honoured by the
Middlesbrough and District Spastics
Association for the work he has done
on their behalf throughout the area.
For the past four years Mr. Smith has
been organising and compering variety
shows for charity throughout the
North-East, and we understand that
these shows have raised around
£22,000, which has been donated to
the Spastics Association to help pay
for a new wing for spastics at Middles¬
brough General Hospital.

Through the Association he received
an invitation to be presented to the
Princess Royal when she visited
Middlesbrough on nth February to
open this new wing at the hospital.
Mr. Smith was representing all the
local artists who had given their ser¬
vices free over the past four years.

APPOINTMENTS

Some recent appointments in ICI are:
Fibres Division: Dr. P. W. Carlene,
Technical Service and Development Direc¬
tor. Head Office: Mr. A. H. D. Barrow,
Acting Head of Recruitment and Transfer

Section, Central Staff Department; Mr.
J. E. Body, Acting Head Office Staff
xManager. Heavy Organic Chemicals
Division: Mr. E. F. A. Banwell, Works
Engineer of the new HOC Division plants
at Sevemside; Dr. R. Whiteley, Works
Manager of the new HOC Division plants
at Sevemside. Nobel Division: Dr. A. D.
Lees, Managing Director (jointly with Mr.
L. Hall). Paints Division: Mr. G.
Costley, Personnel Director (in addition to
his duties as Production Director); Mr.
I. H. H. Donald, Secretary; Mr. G.
Gilbertson, Personnel Manager; Mr. J. S.
Gough, seconded from Central Staff De¬
partment for a year to work in the Per¬
sonnel Department. Arnold, Hoffman&
Co.: Dr. T. Richardson, President (in
addition to his duties as a Dyestuffs Divi¬
sion Director).

RETIREMENTS

Some recent announcements of senior
staff retirements are: Paints Division: Mr.
C. A. Moffatt, Secretary and Personnel
Manager (retired 28th February). The
Regions: Mr. A. C. Everitt, Deputy
Regional Manager, Midland Region (re¬
tiring 31st March).

IN BRIEF

Top again. Paints Division and ICI
(Hyde) have won the ICI Inter-
Division Safety Trophy for the year
ending December i960 after sharing the
trophy with General Chemicals Division
for the 12 months ending June i960.

Safety measures for the Monte.

‘Terylene’ car safety belts were much
in evidence among British competitors
in the 1961 Monte Carlo Rally. Over
half the British starters had them fitted
to their cars, the most popular design
being the Britax single-strap diagonal
belt.

First “Silver.” A special award of
£100 has been made to Mossend
Factory (Billingham Division) on the
completion of two million hours with¬
out a lost time accident. It is the first
works in the Division to win one of the
new silver plaques.’

Plastics agreement. An agreement
has been signed between ICI and the
American Cyanamid Company, a major
US chemical firm, granting the latter
manufacturing rights in the USA for
I Cl’s know-how on methyl methacry¬
late. ICI produce methacrylate products
in the form of ‘Perspex’ sheet, rod and
block and ‘Diakon’ moulding powders.

50 YEARS’ SERVICE

The following employees have completed
50 years’ service with the Company:
Alkali Division: Mr. J. E. Harrott, Bux¬
ton Lime Works (15th February). General
Chemicals Division: Mr. A. E. Jordan.
Distribution Department, Widnes (26th
January); Mr. H. Tomalin, Castner-Kellner
Works (23rd January).

86

DR. CECIL CRONSHAW

Cecil John Turrell Cronshaw, a director of the Company from
1943 to 1952 and a leading figure in the dyestuffs world for
more than thirty years, died in Manchester on 5th January.

Mr. C. Paine writes:

Born in June 1889 in Bury, Lancashire, of Lancashire
stock, he was educated at Bury Grammar School and after
a three-year apprenticeship in the testing house of the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce he went on to Man¬
chester University, where he took a first-class honours
degree in pure chemistry. In 1915 he joined Levinstein
Ltd. and so found himself plunged at once into the struggle
to provide the wartime requirements of dyestuffs and
organic chemicals. In the subsequent rebirth of the
British dyestuffs industry Cronshaw was destined to play
a leading role.

In 1916 Levinstein Ltd. had acquired the Meister
Lucius and Briining indigo factory at Ellesmere Port, and
with it the responsibility of providing indigo for the dyeing
of service uniforms. The factory had been built to operate
on imported German phenyl glycine, and there was no
equipment for making this at Ellesmere Port. Thus Cron¬
shaw, as the new factory manager, was faced with an urgent
and difficult problem. Manufacture of phenyl glycine was
improvised at Levinstein’s Blackley factory, and within
three months the first batch of wartime indigo was made
at Ellesmere Port. After the 1918 Armistice Cronshaw
became chemical controller of the Rhineland area fac¬
tories in Germany for a year. This experience undoubtedly
broadened his understanding of the German organic
chemical industry and of a number of the leading German
industrial chemists.

★ ★ *

In 1919 Cronshaw returned to England as assistant to
Dr. Herbert Levinstein, the managing director of British
Dyestuffs Corporation, which had been formed by the
fusion of Levinstein Ltd. and British Dyes Ltd. of Hud¬
dersfield. Then for three years Cronshaw was works
manager of the Blackley factory, where he became involved
in the manufacture of some of the first rubber chemicals to
be made in Britain on a commercial scale. In 1924 he was
made technical manager of the British Dyestuffs Corpora¬
tion, and when the Corporation became a “founder mem¬
ber” of Imperial Chemical Industries he was first technical
director, then managing director, and finally in 1939 chair¬
man of ICI Dyestuffs Group or, as it is now known, the
Dyestuffs Division of ICI.

In 1943 he became a director on the Main Board of ICI
and served in various posts on that Board until his
retirement in September 1952.

★ ★ ★

This brief sketch of Cronshaw’s industrial career con¬
veys neither the essential flavour of the man nor the
magnitude of his personal contribution to the British
chemical industry. Small in stature, he bubbled with
vitality in his heyday. Warm-hearted and generous in his
encouragement of young chemists, he had a rapier-like wit
and a mind of extraordinary quickness. Sometimes his
thrusts were so rapid that he had no time to put the button
on the foil. Nevertheless, those who knew him were never
hurt by these thrusts; they were sometimes provoked as
they were meant to be—provoked, that is, into action.
Although he wrote and lectured about the industry he
loved, this sort of thing was not really his forte. While he
often had wise and sometimes original things to say, he did
not seem wholly to believe in himself as a lecturer and
therefore did not project from the rostrum the very vital
personality which his colleagues knew and loved. He was
undoubtedly at his most stimulating in the cut and thrust
of personal discussion. Then his chemical enthusiasm and
his imaginative approach to industrial problems were com¬
municated in a most infectious way. Those who worked
with him in the critical period between 1920 and the out¬
break of the second world war readily recognised Cron¬
shaw’s leadership as the biggest individual contribution to
the re-establishment of a dyestuffs industry in Britain
comparable to that in Europe. He and his research
director, James Baddiley, were the cornerstones in the new
edifice. Cronshaw believed passionately in research as an
essential basis for a vigorous industry, and he insisted on
finance being found for it when times were far from easy.
He believed that research should be exciting and vivid:
as he put it, “There should be a catch in the breath.”

Cronshaw was a man of wide interests and an uncon¬
ventional reader. Everything he did he tackled with great
zest and single-mindedness, whether it was business or
beekeeping or sailing a boat. Whenever leisure permitted
he might be seen at the County Cricket Ground or attend¬
ing the Halle Concerts.

In spite of his business responsibilities he gave freely of

87

his leisure time to scientific and technical societies and
other public bodies. He was vice-president of the Society
of Chemical Industry (1935-38), president of the Society
of Dyers and Colourists (1939-46), and prime warden of
the Worshipful Company of Dyers (1949-60). He served
on the Council of Manchester University and was a
governor of his old grammar school for many years.

Cecil Cronshaw was intrinsically a modest man, and the

honours which came his way were modest in relation to his
performance. An honorary doctorate from the Univer¬
sity of Leeds, the Perkin Medal of the Society of Dyers and
Colourists, and a silver medal of the Royal Society of Arts
were the kind of recognition he valued most.

Unhappily, failing health clouded his later years, marring
his retirement. He will be remembered with pride and
affection by his former colleagues as he was in his prime.

MR. LEONARD ARMSTRONG

John Leonard Armstrong, finance director of ICI from
September 1952 until his retirement in February 1956, died
on 7th January after a sudden heart attack while watching
the Springbok rugger match at Twickenham. He was 68.

Mr. E. A. Bingen writes:

We may count Len Armstrong fortunate in the circum¬
stances of his death, since he was an ardent cricketer, a
keen golfer and a great supporter of rugger, but at the same
time our deep sympathy goes out to his wife and family in
his early death when on all the probabilities and his own
fine record of health he had many years of life before
him. Perhaps cricket was his greatest outside interest, and
he played for Stockton in the North Yorkshire/South Dur¬
ham League and later for Beckenham, where he gained the
reputation of a canny and cautious all-rounder.

Len Armstrong was bom at Cowpen Bewley, close to the
present Billingham complex, but of farming stock, and all
his life he retained his interest in agricultural affairs,
taking up farming at Yateley after his retirement.

A mathematical scholar of St. Catharine’s College, Cam¬
bridge, he took an honours degree in mathematics imme¬
diately before the outbreak of the first world war, obtaining
his college colours in cricket, football and hockey.
Articled to Sir William Peat of W. B. Peat & Co. (now Peat
Marwick Mitchell & Co.) in August 1914, he held a com¬
mission in the Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards) from
1915 to 1919 and saw active service in France and Belgium,
being severely wounded at the battle of Messines in June
1917. After his demobilisation he returned to Peat Mar¬
wick Mitchell & Co. and qualified as a chartered account¬
ant in May 1920, and while in the London office from 1925
to 1929 he was concerned with the audit of Nobel Indus¬
tries Ltd. and the liquidation of that company subsequent
to the formation of ICI. He joined the Treasurer’s Depart¬
ment at the end of 1929 and was appointed an assistant
treasurer in 1935, acting as treasurer throughout the war.

an office which he held (except for a short period when
Mr. P. C. Dickens returned to ICI after war service) until
his appointment as finance director.

Apart from being finance director of ICI, Len Arm¬
strong held many other directorships within the ICI
group, being for a time chairman of ICI (New York), a
director of Arnold, Hoffman & Co., and, until his retire¬
ment, a director of Canadian Industries Ltd., in which
capacity he was closely concerned with problems arising
out of their segregation of interests from the Du Pont
Company.

★ ★ ★

To be treasurer and then finance director of an organisa¬
tion as complex and world-wide as ICI is no sinecure, but
Len brought to his task a critical mind and a great
capacity for work. Nothing slovenly eyer got past his
desk, and if he worked his subordinated hard they at least
appreciated that he did not spare hipSelf and was con¬
cerned to see that those who provided the background
thinking were properly recognised. As a result of this he
was successful in developing a really efficient team, who
regarded him not only as their chief but as a personal
friend and counsellor.

The only chartered accountant in a succession of Inland
Revenue men who have made the grade as finance director,
either in ICI or its predecessor companies, Len Armstrong
made a real impact in ICI in the development of practices
and procedures in the financial field which many of us now
take as a matter of course but which would not have
reached their present degree of sophistication but for his
arduous devotion to duty.

88

ate

L

IN THE GARDEN

SEED SOWING

By PERC Y THR O WER

T his month we welcome the
spring; I think it is the most
interesting season of the year,
and certainly a busy one. This must
be considered the latest for the
planting of deciduous trees and
shrubs of all kinds, and for planting
roses; the planting of evergreen
trees and shrubs can continue into
next month, possibly the best
month for planting such as these.

As we see the first signs of fresh
green on the trees and hedgerows
it is an indication to the gardener
that the temperature of the soil is
rising, and we must make the best
of our opportunities to do seed
sowing in both the flower and
vegetable parts of the garden. When
we see the dust blowing up from the
roads and paths we can be sure the
surface of the soil is drying suffi¬
ciently to enable us to make a good
seed-bed, a very welcome sight.

The making of a seed-bed is one
of the most important gardening
operations we have to do; how it is
done will make all the difference
between success and failure. If we
bear in mind what is necessary for
the successful germination of seeds,
it is a good guide. The three
essential elements are warmth, air
and moisture. If we watch for the
soil to dry, when we firm the soil it
will not go down too solid and
exclude the necessary air; and if air
is present we can be sure the soil will
warm up reasonably quickly.
Sufficient moisture will be retained,
but not too much to prevent the
entry of air and slow down the
warming-up process.

The soil which has been dug over
during the autumn or winter must
be firmed, and this is best done by
treading all over, pushing down the
lumps, and at the same time
breaking them up. Next the surface
must be raked fine and even; fine,
so that the tiny seeds will be in
direct contact with the soil particles;
and even, so that the water in the
event of heavy rain will not lie in
the low places. Before firming and
raking some complete or general
fertilizer can be spread over the
surface, allowing a small handful for
each square yard; firming and raking
will mix this with the surface soil.
The plant foods in the fertilizer will
become soluble in the soil water,
will find their way down into the
soil and be there when the young
plants require them.

Seeds to sow in the vegetable
garden this month include broad
beans, peas, parsnips, onions, let¬
tuce, radish, Brussels sprouts and
cabbage. All except the Brussels
sprouts and cabbage will be sown
where they will be left to mature,
and enough space must be left
between the rows so that every plant
can get its fair share of light and air.
Success will depend to a great
extent on the spacing of the plants.

I prefer to sow broad beans by
making a trench the width of the
spade and an inch deep, spacing the
beans 9 in. apart along each side of
the trench and alternate in the rows.
For peas too I make a trench the
width of the spade and a little less
than an inch deep. I space the peas
3 in. apart along each side of the

trench and one row down the centre.
There must be at least 3 ft. between
the broad bean rows if more than
onedoublerowissown. Thedistance
between the rows of peas will depend
on the height they grow; for those
growing to 18 in. allow 2 ft. between
the rows, those growing to 3 ft. or
more allow 3-5 ft. between the rows.

Thus what might seem extrava¬
gant use of space need not be
wasted: lettuce, radish and spinach
can be sown between the rows and
will not grow high enough to keep
light from the other crops and in
most cases will reach maturity and be
cleared before the others reach their
full height. Parsnips, onions, and
other similar crops need 15-18 in.
between the rows.

Ihe power-driven rotary cultiva¬
tors are being used more and more
these days; they save an enormous
amount of hard work. Where these
are available the spacing between
the rows of vegetables should be
enough to allow the use of a small
cultivator between the rows. The
rotary cultivator can be used for
keeping down weeds as well as
stirring the surface of the soil and so
helping the growing crops.

The preparations for seed sowing
in the flower garden must be just
as thorough, and seeds of the hardy
annuals can in southern districts be
sown out of doors this month; in the
colder northern areas sowing will
best be done in April or early May.
My favourites among these are
sweet peas, larkspur, calendula,
cornflower, annual chrysanthemum,
linum and the pink lavatera.

89

Information Notes

Have you ever noticed which way the vortex revolves when you let
the water out of your bath? A common theory is that, influenced
by the rotation of the earth, the bath water flows out clockwise
in Britain and anticlockwise in Australia. James Taylor, Chair¬
man of Yorkshire Imperial Metals, makers of the copper tubes
that dispose of bath water, took up the challenge to find out.

By James Taylor

Illustrations by Peter Kneebone

I ’ll let you into a secret. Whenever an ICI director
makes a trip abroad he must write a report about it.
To produce one which commands the attention of the
Board is no mean feat, and in addition some at least of
the subject-matter must be important, if not out of this
world.

On a recent trip to the antipodes I was asked to investi¬
gate a topic which has interested the non-ferrous metals
industry for some considerable time. I considered that I
could possibly assist because I had given some study in
recent years, as an erstwhile physicist, to the non-equiva¬
lence of parity and the paradox of the right- and left-
handed universes. It seemed to me that a similar approach

could be applied to the problem which has exercised the
copper tube trade, particularly that part of it which is
concerned with the manufacture of domestic water service
fittings (DWSF), This concerns the direction of rotation
of the water contents of the domestic bath which run out
through those same fittings.

The common theory is that the vortex formed by the
water rotates clockwise (c.) in the northern hemisphere
and anticlockwise (a.c.) in the southern hemisphere. This
direction of rotation could have a close connection with
corrosion in copper pipes. The subject was obviously of
importance, since we already make DWSF in Australia
and are proposing to erect a factory to manufacture copper

90

tubes in New Zealand. If the spiral motion of the water is
reversed in the antipodes, it may be that the corrosion
which occurs on the inside of tubes in Britain may be
reversed to occur on the outside in New Zealand: this poses
some very ticklish problems for the technical people.

Having agreed, at short notice, to carry out some re¬
searches during my trip, I naturally wished to make some
first-hand observations in the UK before departure, and
I initiated the research programme with
enthusiasm. Apparatus for such work,

I soon determined, was not costly. The
best method of making observations is
to fashion small paper boats, as children
do, from a supply of non-absorbent
paper, which is readily available, and
place them near the edge of the whirlpool
if and when it forms.

Like charity, which begins at home, I
started chez-moi. Results were incon¬
clusive, since my bath water hardly runs
out at all, and certainly not in a spiral
movement. In order to save the situa¬
tion, as I thought, I made a quick trip to
Yorkshire Imperial Metals, Leeds, the
mecca of DWSF, so to speak, but
the hole in the hotel bath was of such
large diameter that the water ran out
vertically, and there was no vortex
either. The Boeing 707 in which we
made the trip to Sydney, via America
and Honolulu, didn’t further my
research, since there was no bath and
no future in “topping and tailing” in a small basin at
35,000 feet.

After 32 hours’ flying I reached Sydney in fairly good
shape, but tired and ready for a bath—not one bath, but
many. Eleven ran out with a clockwise spiral, and three
started clockwise and finished anticlockwise. In the
absence of a Research Managers’ Conference I found this
a bit perplexing.

Two days later we went to Melbourne, but I’m sorry to
say that like so many research chemists I lost my piece of
paper and, having failed to retrieve it, I cannot remember
which way the spiral went. It was with
added zest that I took the next leg of the
trip to New Zealand, where I looked forward
to seeing the site of the new factory and to
catching up with my research programme.
Unfortunately some non-technical type must
have arranged the accommodation and pro¬
vided me with a shower. Time did not
allow a trip to Rotorua to ascertain whether
the hot springs ran back into the bowels of
the earth c. or a.c.

Back in Australia we spent a day at a cousin’s “station”
at Gunnedah, north-east of Sydney. I don’t think the
station is beyond the “black stump,” because there are
baths there, not “Alice Springs,” and the water ran out
clockwise not once, but twice. Melbourne wasn’t a write¬
off, however, because we went back again to see ICI
House, and that would be something, even in Texas.
Twice the bath ran out a.c. but once a.c., followed by c.
towards the end.

On the return flight home we stopped
off at Singapore and had two baths: the
first was a.c./c. and the second c. all the
way. At Kuala Lumpur (KL) the score
was three a.c./c. and one c. all the way.
Karachi yielded three c.’s and in revolt
three c./a.c.’s. At Khewra Soda Factory
we were provided with the biggest bath¬
room I have ever seen. The egress of
the bath water was c./a.c.

On arriving in the UK I decided to
brave the cold and the wet to make a
pilgrimage to Scotland, where folks are
logical and lost causes are considered
with serious courtesy. I was tired, and I
had a dose of flu coming on due to exces¬
sive bathing, having removed the fats
and protective vitamins from my epider¬
mis; but I was determined. It was my
last visit to Nobel’s as Group Director,
and I resolved to go back to London
cleansed in a last burst of exact and
quantitative bathing. At the Royal
Scottish Automobile Club, which had meant so much
in my motor rallying days, I proudly pulled the plug,
not once but twice, and got two magnificent a.c. spirals
all the way. At the farewell dinner at Glenfoot the
Nobel Division gave me a silver cigarette box and two
baths, both clockwise. That decided me. In future I’m
leaving research to the Research Director, and as soon
as he has finished his present investigations on throwing
eggs over house-tops to see if they break I hope he will
take up the spiral movement of liquids from venting
vessels.

V'

1 \ \ 1

IX X »

:: ' sk J /

. \ ... m

91

INCOME TAX AND COMMON SENSE

By J. E. Davies

We asked our Taxation Controller to write a brief article on
taxation problems which crop up not infrequently in conversa¬
tion. He retorted with the Shakespearian quotation: “Lets talk
of worms, and graves, and epitaphs; make dust our paper,
and with rainy eyes write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.”

M uch has been said and written about the deficiencies
of our taxation system, both as regards the law and
the administration. It is an extremely difficult matter both
to tax and to please, and shortcomings become immediately
evident when the tax official fails to agree with the tax¬
payer. But despite that, our tax administration is generally
recognised as the best in an imperfect world. That does
not mean that there is no room for improvement, but only
that the main complaints point to the law rather than to
its administration.

Our troubles ultimately derive from the weight of tax,
and that is a matter of national policy. If income tax,
instead of being at the standard rate of 7s. 9d. in the £,
were, say, 2s. 6d. or thereabouts, we would not be so
interested in obtaining every possible trifling tax adjust¬
ment. Nor would there be the same need for so many of
the 101 cumbersome relief provisions which have to be
enacted in order to exempt bits and pieces. It just would
not matter so much.

Even as things are it
would be a mistake to think
that our Income Tax Act
compares badly with its
foreign counterparts.

Nevertheless, fault can
easily be found with the
present condition of affairs,
leaving aside technicalities.

Once again the vexed
question of the Schedule
A, or Property Tax, is
under discussion. We
have MPs saying it is
possible to own houses and not pay any Property Tax;
and in some quarters it seems to be felt that there is
something smart or wrong about this. It is quite straight¬
forward; you will get help from the Inland Revenue to
make a claim if you are a house owner, and the help will be
freely given. Broadly all that happens is that, when your
house is assessed, a deduction is made to cover repairs and
maintenance, thus reducing the gross annual value on
which tax is levied. But if you spend more than the fixed
allowance for repairs and maintenance on an average of

five years, the excess is allowed as a further deduction.
Thus, if your house is assessed at a gross annual value of
£50, it is given a repairs allowance of £10, so that tax is
collected on £40. If, however, you spend, on the average
of the five years preceding, say £25 a year, you get a
further £15 allowance.

As it is not difficult in these times to spend enough on
repairs and decorations to cover the whole gross annual
value, quite a number of people who own their houses do
not pay this tax. Of course, these gross values at the
present time are well below true annual values, and
whether it will be so easy to spend up to the level of the
new gross values after the proposed Rating and Valuation
Bill comes into force in 1963 (if the Schedule A values
should follow the rating values) is another matter. But
there is no mystery about it, nor is there anything blame¬
worthy—no one in his senses, after all, will spend £1 in
order to save the tax on it! Improvements to the property
do not qualify.

Then there is another aspect of Schedule A. Should it
be abolished ? It is a relic of days long gone by when the
surest way of assessing a man’s ability to pay was by
looking at his house as evidence of his wealth. But no
other tax system in the world has the same feature. They
are, of course, all much more modern than our own, which
was the pioneer in income taxation.

The arguments in favour of abolition are that the tax is
wrong in principle and in any event is not very productive
when one considers the trouble of collection, the main¬
tenance claims, and so forth. Properties used for com¬
mercial and business purposes have the tax collected
set against tax on the profits of the business, so there is
little effect beyond the creation of more work. So far as
rented properties are concerned, the landlord is already
taxed on rents to the extent that they exceed his Schedule A
assessment. It is therefore only where the owner-occupier
is concerned that there has been much argument, some of
it political, and it seems there has been some confusion of
thought.

It is sometimes argued that if a man buys a house he is
saved from paying a rent, so he is better off to that extent;
he may have sold shares to buy the house, and he has
merely changed the form of income. So on these grounds

92

he ought to pay tax on the income it would produce. But
of course what he has really done is to change from one
form of wealth which produces actual cash income to
another form which produces enjoyment but no cash in¬
come; and the fact that he could hire (or rent) out his
form of wealth is beside the point. Why, of all the assets
which a man desires to own, pick on a house ? You might
just as well assess the owner on the annual rentable value of
a piano, a car, a picture—assets which the tax authorities
are content to deal with by way of death duties!

A great deal can be said
about the treatment of
married couples. We give
a married man a somewhat
higher personal allowance
than a single person; and
if the wife is earning in¬
come we give her a special
earned income allowance
also; and then if there is a
family there are the child
allowances, and these are
very acceptable. But once
these allowances are used
up, the “slab” system of tax comes into force, and as the
taxable income rises so does the rate. This has no small
effect, although it is most pronounced naturally enough
in the higher ranges of income.

Now in the USA, Germany and other advanced
countries they do not believe that two can live that much
cheaper than one. There the income can be split so that
each gets the treatment applicable to a single person
against the income as divided. In other words, the couple
pay twice the tax on half the income. Take the simple case
of a married man earning £1000 a year with no other
income belonging to himself or his wife. He now pays
(to the nearest £) £153. Split his income for tax purposes
so that each is treated as a single person earning £500,
and each would pay £49* Double it, and twice the tax on
half the income is £98. Going higher up the scale to a
man earning £3000, the figure he now pays is £856. This
would become £685.

It is rather thought-provoking. It is permissible for a
man to divest himself of his income provided it is done
irrevocably and he satisfies certain legal requirements. If
he does so he no longer pays tax on the part he has handed
over, provided the income is not passed to his wife or,
incidentally, to his own acknowledged infant unmarried
children. But if the couple had forgotten to get married
all would be well. Often the courts have quoted the
famous saying that “income tax and equity are strangers.”
It seems that income tax and morality are enemies!

Heavy taxation puts a great strain on morality in many
other ways. No one likes paying it much, and it is not

unreasonable to attempt to minimise it. The legislature
has no objection to this, providing one avoids tax and does
not evade it—a distinction which is more than a little
puzzling to many people. A taxing act must be taken to
mean exactly what it says, otherwise a taxpayer will not
know where he stands. It is no use saying that because an
act includes one thing and not another it is not fair—
unless you can say it in Parliament, preferably with a
majority behind you. But once it is clear and the finger
points directly at you, you have to pay: if you then dodge
it, it is evasion and you are on the wrong side of the law.

You must not, for instance, take cash out of your till
without recording it for tax, nor receive pay for casual
labour without returning it for any due tax which ought to
fall upon it, nor, in fact, conceal any items of income upon
which the charge falls. But the taxpayer is entitled to take
all steps within the law to cut down his tax. A famous
judge once remarked that no man is bound to arrange his
affairs so as to permit the Revenue to put the largest
possible shovel into his stores. So he does what he can to
arrange matters so as to attract the least liability. This is
avoidance, and it is an important factor in deciding his
investment policy and the disposal of his income, and
indeed it often has a powerful influence on the direction of
his activities.

Obviously if Parliament in its wisdom decides that some
methods of avoidance defeat the real intention of the Act,
the remedy is to alter the law, and this is often done. We
had an outstanding example in the so-called dividend

stripping clauses of the last
Finance Act.

What should be pointed
out is that the principle
that the law says what it
means, if you can clearly
perceive the meaning, cuts
both ways. It may have
been noticed that a few
weeks ago the Court of
Appeal held that although
a certain item of foreign
“. . . complications of income of ICI had to
modem society ” form the basis of assessment

for taxation for two successive years it could only have
relief for foreign tax once. The argument was some¬
what technical, but the result was two assessments and
one relief because the law was held to say so.

On the whole it must be said that with a certain amount
of creaking by the tax machine, and rather more groaning
by the “customer,” the over-large harvest of direct
taxation is brought in pretty well. But it is felt by many
that there are definite shortcomings in the general scheme,
quite apart from a number of the more technical faults
which the authorities seem too slow to correct.

93

/%a

ONE MAN AND HIS JOB

‘Drikold’ Expert

T he question “What is your job?” set Raymond
Frederick Sweeting pondering for a moment.
“Technical Sales Service . . .” that part was easy;
but the last word? Was it representative or adviser?
When he had told me his story, we settled for adviser .

But in fact Ray Sweeting ought to be called Mr,
Drikold. His headquarters are at Billingham, and his job
is to advise on the use of this unique product: ICI’s brand
of solid carbon dioxide, sometimes called “dry ice.”
‘Drikold 5 is produced in blocks, ten by seven and a half
inches square, at a temperature of minus iio° Fahrenheit:
that is, 142 0 F. colder than ice. Unlike ice, it evaporates
without melting, leaving no trace behind.

It is used first as a refrigerant; secondly as a source of
pure carbon dioxide: “That is to say, 55 Ray Sweeting
translates, “to put fizz into pop—mineral waters, you
know. 55

Sweeting himself, a man in his mid-fifties with greyish
hair and a heart-warming smile, is mainly concerned with
the use of ‘Drikold 5 as a refrigerant, particularly in the
transport of perishable foods—ice cream, frozen foods,
meat; not to mention jellied eels, fresh strawberries, yeast
and cheese.

There are other refrigerant uses: such as are found in
laboratory work, the freezing of water pipes to facilitate
repairs, and what is delicately called “pre-burial sanita¬
tion”^—that is, the preservation of bodies before burial.
Ray Sweeting once had a call from a funeral director who
wanted to know how to use the stuff. As ‘Drikold 5 is of
course a wasting product and can’t be stored indefinitely,
he asked: “When is the funeral ?” The customer replied:
“Oh, he 5 s not dead yet. The operation’s today, and I just
want to be ready.”

★ ★ ★

Another remarkable enquiry came from a gentleman
whose hobby was showing prize dogs, which he trans¬
ported across country in the boot of his car. On sultry
days the animals arrived dishevelled and panting. Couldn’t
a block of‘Drikold 5 be packed into the boot to relieve their
suffering ? The would-be customer was disappointed to
learn that with the little control he was prepared to under¬
take it would be more than likely that his cargo would
arrive frozen solid. A rather similar enquiry was that of a
military gentleman who, with laudable concern for the
comfort of his old regiment, wanted to tuck ‘Drikold’ in
their bearskins.

As you will see, there is plenty of scope in the job of

advising customers how best to use ‘Drikold’ efficiently
and at a reasonable cost. The latter point is important,
because ‘Drikold’ is faced with strong competition. It is
important to know how to handle and store ‘Drikold, 5
remembering that it starts to evaporate as soon as it is
made and requires special packages and insulated bins for
storage.

Then there are the urgent enquiries on the telephone.
In midsummer these are apt to make life hectic indeed.
Everyone in England seems suddenly to become obsessed
with the desire to cool vast stocks of butter or to make sure
that the beer in the cellar is cold enough even to satisfy
visiting Americans.

Next, there is the writing of sales literature. Sweeting
has the knack of presenting essential facts clearly and
without embroidery: an invaluable gift in this part of his
work. He is also responsible for lectures during instruc¬
tional courses to sales representatives.

★ ★ ★

Ray Sweeting’s job is part chairborne, part mobile. He
has travelled as far north as Wick and as far south as the
Scilly Isles—nearly always accompanied by a sales repre¬
sentative—to meet customers and discuss their problems.
Perhaps a fruit grower needs advice on how to apply the
refrigerant in vans carrying fresh strawberries (which
must be no more than cool), or Birds Eye may wish to
transport frozen foods (which must be kept at a much
lower temperature). Or perhaps Mac Fisheries seek help
in transporting container loads of frozen fish from Aber¬
deen to London. There is no monotony about this part
of the job: there was, for example, a request for assistance
in transporting “Kangaroo trimmings” to an address in
Ascot. No further details were proferred, but Sweeting
succeeded in supplying the circus lions and tigers in their
winter quarters with kangaroo meat at just the tempera¬
ture they prefer.

‘Drikold 5 was first marketed in 1931, and Sweeting—
trained as an analyst, and on ICI’s staff since 1927—has
worked with the product since the year after it became
nationally available. Though he has help from the labora¬
tories and an engineering section to deal with special
cases, his is virtually a one-man job.

He’s a married man with one daughter, and at home in
Linthorpe has as hobbies gardening and colour photo¬
graphy. But in my opinion he lives, breathes, thinks and
dreams ‘Drikold 5 —a man with a life-interest which is a
good deal colder than charity, but much more interesting.

Ray Sweeting

95

NEWS IN PICTURES

Home and Overseas

India and Pakistan visit. Mr. S. P. Chambers, ICI Chair¬
man, visited India and Pakistan between 29th January and
19th February. During his trip he visited the Calcutta head¬
quarters of ICI (India), where he presented long service
awards to forty employees. Above: xMrs. Chamelia, of the
Alkali and Chemical Corporation of India, Rishra, the first
lady recipient from Calcutta, receives a 15 year award from
Mr. Chambers. Right: Mr. and Mrs. Chambers with Mrs.
Lall (left), wife of the chairman of ICI (India), passing
through the specially decorated gate on their way to watch the
sixteenth annual athletics meet in Calcutta and to make long
service presentations. Later they travelled to Delhi, Bombay,
Madras, Colombo and Karachi. While in Karachi as the guest
of ICI (Pakistan), Mr. Chambers met several members of the
Pakistan Government and leaders of industry

Portable pool. Southampton
Education Department has de¬
veloped this portable swimming
pool for its primary schools. Left:
The steel framework. Below: The
pool completed, with the water con¬
tainer made from a single flat sheet
of ICI ‘Hydex’ pvc-coated nylon
fabric manufactured by ICI (Hyde)
Ltd. and filled from a 6 in. ‘Hydex’
hose. {See also page 83.)

New tower. One of the
most recent additions to
Wilton’s skyline is this
105 ft. supporting tower,
comprising some 3000
separate parts, which was
constructed in Wilton
Works’ central workshops.
It is a 12 1 -ton triangular
tubular steel tripod and is
part of an extension pro¬
gramme to enable nearly
20,000 extra tons of nylon
to be made annually by
the north-east coast plants
of Dyestuffs Division

New look. All ICI garden products are appearing
in redesigned packs this spring. Here is a selection of
the new-look range. Light and dark blue—traditional
ICI colours—have been chosen as the main colours,
with a third colour added to help distinguish the
different products—for instance, red for ‘Sybol’ and
green for ‘Verdone’

Rally is t. Mr. B. L. Field, dyestuffs sales manager for South Wales {far
left), was a member of the Welsh team in the Monte Carlo Rally which in
their Riley 1*5 covered 2300 of the 3600 km. without penalty. In the
Auvergne an encounter with a snow-filled ditch lost them vital time, and
a gallant first attempt was recorded as “abandoned at Le Puy”

Magadi celebrations- It was a memorable
day for employees of the Magadi Soda Co.
Ltd., Kenya, a subsidiary of I Cl, when on
26th January they celebrated the company’s
golden jubilee. A variety of entertainments
were held at Lake Magadi for the 3000 resi¬
dents who live and work there. Above: The
Masai chief and his party enjoy ice creams
while watching the show. Right: A splendid
buffet table at a cocktail party held in Nairobi
two days later to which some 200 guests were
invited. (See also page 82.)

iHUU/ CHIVUV.

Quick action. Billingham Division road transport driver Mr. F. W.
Cook has won praise from the chief fire officer of Nottinghamshire
and from the Company for his quick thinking. When seeing two
crashed vehicles in danger of burning out, he used some of his
cargo of liquid carbon dioxide to smother the fire

Pole vaulter Jim McManus, who last July was in the Great
Britain B team which beat Belgium in the North East’s first inter¬
national athletics match at Billingham, ha$ now joined the Division
and is a member of the Synthonia Athletics Section

‘Perspex’ Jubilee. It is 25 years since the first commercial sheet of
‘Perspex’ was cast at Billingham Division. Here a group of the pioneers, all
now at Wilton, gather round a model of the original apparatus used in the
manufacturing process. From the left: Messrs. A. Bumess, R. H. Povey,
H. Salter and J. Jackson

Fire! Fire! This team of enthusiastic girl fire-fighters armed with buckets
and stirrup pumps are among the first women of Brunner House staff to
volunteer for Alkali Division’s Civil Defence organisation. They are (left to
right ) F. Wilkes, P. Beilis, D. Denson, M. Figgins, J. Batsford, E. Bowyer,
S. Millington, W. Bowden, R. Lamb and J. Anderson

Humphrey Lyttleton, Old Etonian,
ex-Guards officer and top hot jazz
trumpeter, is greeted by Mr. A. J.
Croslandof Wilton Works Castle club
before he and his five-man ensemble
blast their way through an evening of
jazz classics

Gold awards won by Colin Sander¬
son and Peter Fisher of Metals Divi¬
sion under the Duke of Edinburgh’s
scheme were gained through their
work with the St. John Ambulance
Brigade. They received the awards
at Buckingham Palace recently

Mountain rescue. This spectacular picture was
taken by torchlight during a mountain rescue
exercise which was part of the advanced Discovery
course for youths, recently organised by Billingham
Division. Mr. R. Teigh, a trainer from the Educa¬
tion Department, was the “patient,” and here John
Fletcher, an apprentice fitter, keeps the stretcher
level, guiding it down the rock face while three of
his colleagues at the top pay out the ropes

Reluctant hero. It was only after lengthy en¬
quiries that the rescuers of two drowning children
were recently traced. One of them was James Lee,
19-year-old lab assistant at Billingham Division,
photographed here by the Sunderland Echo receiving
a Royal Humane Society testimonial from Mr. G.
C. Park, the chairman of the county magistrates.
The girl he rescued was thought to be dead when
he got her back to the beach but recovered and was
taken to hospital

WE DONT WATCH

— (AJ€ PLAY

Britons have sometimes been accused of
becoming a nation of spectators* Has that
trend now been reversed? Denzil Batchelor
produces statistics suggesting that it has,
because of the rise in popularity of individual
sports not involving organised teamwork.
Sailing, golf and badminton, in that order,
head the list of sports on the up and up.

By Denzil Batchelor

Golf. 50,000 more players in last five years.
Schools now teach it

T he great reproach to sporting Britons during a
period lasting from the end of World War I to
the mid-fifties was that they were a nation of
spectators. The most remarkable trend in the sixties
is that the sons and younger brothers of those specta¬
tors have become participants.

The change started between five and ten years ago,
and has markedly increased recently. By and large, it
represents not only a swing from a passive to an
active role, but also from team games to sports calling
for individual participation: sailing, golf, badminton—
in that order—head the list of sports on the up
and up.

fl

It must not, however, be assumed jMt team games
have lost all hold on public interest. It is true that in
the first two months of the present season League
football gates have decreased by between one and a
half to two million—but it must not be forgotten that
admission charges have been increased from 2s. to
2s. 6d., in some cases to 3s. Thus, since the 15% drop
in attendances must be set against a 25% increase in
admission charges, it cannot be maintained that public
interest in League football has entirely evaporated.
Nevertheless, gates will probably be down by 8
million on the season—just as last year’s cricket gates
were down by 500,000 on attendances five years ago.

100

All the same, more and more young men are playing
amateur football at every level. The Football Asso¬
ciation controls over 25,000 amateur clubs. A million
amateur footballers go into action every Saturday
afternoon.

But striking as these figures are, they are less impres¬
sive than the statistics of the new do-it-yourself
brigade who have become participants in individual¬
istic as opposed to team games. In the past five years
250,000 men and women have taken up sailing: twenty
times as many as went in for it at the beginning of the
period under review. Ten years ago the Central
Council of Physical Recreation gave three instructional
courses attended by 40 pupils in all; this year more
than 2000 will take these courses. The formation of
the Schools’ Sailing Association is a portent, but it is
remarkable that in this sport at least all the converts

do not belong to the 16-21 age-group, who are the
pioneers in the new trend. The CCPR finds many
6o-year-olds taking to the sport for the first time.

Golf is booming. There are 50,000 more exponents
than there were in 1956. The game is particularly
well served in a missionary sense by the Golf Founda¬
tion, whose prime object is to introduce it into schools.
It started in 1952 with five schools, and today it has
more than 500 (with over 12,000 players) on its list.
Last year the Foundation embarked on the plan of
giving instructional classes to juniors.

Twice as many people ski today as did five years ago.
There are dri-ski training centres all over the country,
and the Ski Club of Great Britain co-operates with the
CCPR in teaching and training young people who
propose to spend active holidays in Norway, Switzer¬
land, Italy and Austria, Travel agents compute that

Wilton Golf Course —an outstanding example of a golf course catering for the golfing boom. It has 552 members, of
whom 251 are drawn from the payroll and 301 from the staff of ICI. Subscription is £2 a year or rod. a week for members

of the Wilton Recreation Club

101

[ THESE SPORTS ARE ON THE UP^AND^UP

Sailing. Twenty times more people do it
than five years ago. A quarter of a million
people now sail

Athletics. More and more people are taking
it up

Ski-ing. Twice as many skiers as five years
ago. Dri-ski training schools established in the
big cities. 50,000 skiers go abroad every year

between 50,000 and 60,000 go abroad every year.
Young people can get a fortnight’s ski-ing holiday for
as little as £25 or less: an average figure would be
£ 45 ~£ 5 0 - Expensive equipment, including skis, is of
course hired.

Horse-riding, like ski-ing, has doubled its devotees
in the past five years, largely due to the work done by
the pony clubs, with a world-wide membership of
60,000 up to seventeen years of age. Nowadays the
club no longer appeals solely to teenage girls as it
seemed to in the fifties. A.hundred and sixty riding
clubs cater for adult members, charging a guinea a
year and perhaps 10s. for a weekly ride. A new deve¬
lopment is night instruction classes at local institutes.

Athletics, swimming, table tennis, badminton and
fencing have between them added 150,000 active
participants in the past five years. In the case of bad¬
minton the increase in popularity is checked only by
the shortage of available courts—there would be tens
of thousands more badminton players if there was
anywhere for them to play.

A Million Anglers

And the most popular participant sport of all ? It
must surely be angling: there are said to be more than
a million anglers engaged in sea fishing all the year
round (without a licence), game fishing from spring
to autumn, and coarse fishing from summer to spring,
the exact seasons being determined by the local river
boards.

Mark well, not every sport can point to an increased
popularity: boxing and, alas, cricket are among the
backsliders. Strangely enough, lawn tennis, though

increasingly taught in schools, has also lost popularity
with the general public. The number of public courts
under the control of local authorities decreased from
10,197 in 1939 to 8298 in 1958, the last year for which
figures are available, and the use made of those that
remained decreased too. In 1949-50 the number of
registered players using London County Council
courts was 29,881: in 1957-58 it was 15,638—a de¬
cline of nearly 50% in nine years. The creation this
year of the Lawn Tennis Foundation should do much
to revive public interest.

New Trends

Very well, then: playing rather than watching has
become, and is increasingly becoming, the rule in
Britain. Why is this, and where will it lead us ?

The first question is the easier to answer. To begin
with, it should be noted that the trend to participant
sports is most marked among ex-public school boys,
grammar school boys, and young members of the
professional classes. The working-class lad on reach¬
ing school leaving age is a little less apt to fill his spare
time with sporting activities and a little more ready to
spend it on the care of his bike or the garden, or on do-
it-yourself jobs in the home. Perhaps it is because the
public school or grammar school boy has already had
his fill of the discipline of organised sport that he
turns to activities in which he can try out his indivi¬
dual strength and skill rather than to games in which
at best he feels himself a member of a team, and at
worst a cog in a machine.

Certain it is that the young man and woman of today
are going to develop their sporting tastes without fears

Angling. The most popular sport of all .
One million participants

Badminton. Increasingly popu - Pony clubs. Membership doubled in last

lar, but checked by shortage ofcourts five years. Night classes now available at

several local institutes

that they will not be able to afford to follow their bent.
The youth’s father, as a young worker, could just
about afford the price of admission to watch the local
football team: hence his subsequent loyalty to the
home club. But the young man of today can afford to
buy a fully operational 7 ft. dinghy for £50, perhaps
even a General Purposes 14 for £160. If he wants to
economise, he knows that he can save up to 30% or
40% of the cost of his boat by buying a kit and putting
it together himself.

If he decides to take up golf, he knows that he may
have to pay £50 for his bag of clubs: but there are
professionals who will sell them to him on hire
purchase. It is not difficult to find a municipal course
where he can get a round for 2s. 6d. or 3s.

Shortages to be Tackled

But many problems remain. Are there, for example,
enough badminton courts for the new entry ? Aren’t
all the golf links chock-a-block every week-end ? It is
clear that while we continue to think in terms of turf
we shall be in trouble: obviously there will not be
enough to go round. Substitutes must be found,
and—although there is scope for much more work on
the subject—they are already being found. Redgrass
is one, others include a number of bituminous sur¬
faces. But even if you had as many running tracks,
tennis courts and even football pitches as you could
hope for, there would still be queues waiting to play.
You immediately order more floodlighting—only to
find that this does no more than touch the fringe of
the problem.

The plain fact is that there are too many sportsmen

chasing too few playing fields on too few days of the
week . Many a golf links, teeming with life on Satur¬
day and Sunday, is all but deserted from Monday to
Friday. The same applies to lawn tennis courts.

Again, what about the sports fields owned by public
and other schools? These remain unused for four
months of the year. Is it, as some suggest, essential
that they should do so for replanting and recondition¬
ing, or are these open spaces so much national capital
jealously locked up ?

National Effort

One thing seems certain: the problem of giving the
millions of sports-loving Britons the opportunity to
enjoy themselves as they please must sooner than
later be tackled on a national level. A possible solu¬
tion, urged by Sir Stanley Rouse, is to insist that the
luckier clubs and foundations should make their
facilities available to players from outside the estab¬
lishment in off-peak periods. Another suggestion that
has been mooted is that the two holidays of the week¬
end should be staggered during the week to ensure
that the chance to enjoy whatever sporting facilities
the nation offers is as widely spread as possible.

On 3rd February it was made known that the sug¬
gestion proferred by the Wolfenden Report to the
Government for £10 million to be made available
annually for the nation’s sporting needs was refused.
In the circumstances, those who control sport are
probably thankful that the chief increase in public
interest in our tight little island remains centred on
sailing. There, at least, you have the sea to fall back
on—or into.

102

103

By Derek Clements

Are we neglecting a priceless heritage from our fore¬
fathers ? Should we not make more use of our canals
as a haven of refuge from restless, industrial Britain ?
“Here you will find a sense of peace and of adventure
not to be found elsewhere,” writes Derek Clements,
extracts of whose diary are published below.

m N ex-bomber pilot, looking every inch the part,
L\ has invited me to spend my holiday with him
A and his family on a canal cruise. He has bought
an airborne lifeboat and by much hard work and con¬
siderable ingenuity has converted it into the ideal
canal cruiser. The boat is flat-bottomed, the draught
is light, and the propeller is recessed in a tunnel. To
prevent weeding up he has his own specially designed
closed-circuit cooling system. My conception of a canal
has taken on a new meaning.

★ * ★ *

Built for a community entirely unknown to us,
canal-side inns have an air not to be found elsewhere
in Britain. Mostly it is of days gone by, with a domi¬
nating smell of old blue leather, steeped for decades
in strange local brews. Today we were lucky enough
to find an inn almost unchanged since the days when

the canal was first constructed, its knot of distinctively
dressed watermen swapping yarns in a comer. “You’ll
be from the cut,” said the landlord, with instantaneous
recognition of a traveller from the canal* or “cut” as it
is called. This recognition is the halfinark of an ex¬
perienced watermen’s innkeeper. *

★ ★ ★ ★

The warning came from one of us who had been
awakened by the barely perceptible but tell-tale for¬
ward and backward movement of the boat against the
ropes which always heralds the distant approach of a
narrowboat. “Quick—on deck and keep the boat off
the bank!” someone shouted. Shivering slightly in
our pyjamas, we scrambled up the narrow ladder to the
roof deck and seized an oar each. As the narrowboat
drew abreast, a tremendous swell overtook us. It was

104

The converted airborne lifeboat nego¬
tiates the hazards of a canal lock and
bridge. These lifeboats were slung beneath
bombers like the Shackleton and dropped
for the rescue of shot-down aircrews.
The lifeboat shown here is the Mark
3, an aluminium vessel designed by
Saunders-Roe

canal journey

through the
Midlands

Uidfcncst

* i£r£ WJU-- 5 VUXV.

105

The Pride of a Canal Boat is fresh gleaming paint—especially the watercan,
traditionally found spout facing forward in a prominent position on the cabin roof. Most narrow-
boats are brightly painted, the traditional design being roses and castles. Unfortunately many of
these patterns have been obliterated in recent years by the yellow and blue of British Waterways.

LOVE OF COl

,OL

; a

JR

J _-«L .

A

Tight squeeze. There was only just room for two in the lock
as the converted airborne lifeboat squeezed past a narrowboat

as much as the three of us could do to keep the
stones which lay just below the bank from piercing our
hull.

The wash of a narrowboat in the restricted width of
a canal has to be endured to be believed. Narrowboats
are barges specially designed for the smaller canals.
Up to 70 ft. long, they fit in the single-gate locks like a
refill into a ball-pen. Almost invariably they tow a
second barge, known as a butty. Normally the hus¬
band steers the first barge and looks after its engine,
while his wife steers the second in addition to looking
after the children and keeping the living quarters spot¬
less and the copper and brass gleaming. The pride of
every boat is its painted water can. These are tradi¬
tionally kept spout facing outwards on top of the cabin
roof.

★ ★ ★ ★

With the sense of remoteness conveyed by a canal
journey such as ours and the absence of the incessant
clamour of civilisation, the countryside comes once
more into its own. As you float along in silence, you
lie on your back and watch the hedges and trees glide

slowly past. Occasionally you stand on the roof deck
and blow a bugle before turning a blind comer to warn
any approaching boat to slacken speed.

★ ★ ★ ★

A staircase is a series of locks leading one into
another. At Foxton, near Market Harborough in
Leicestershire, a most interesting construction once
existed. By the side of the staircase lie the ruins of a
gigantic inclined plane. This was built to haul narrow-
boats sideways up the hill in huge caissons filled with
water. There were eight rails to hold the weight of the
barges and a steam donkey in a power house to do the
winding.

Although this method speeded up the time taken by
a narrowboat in going from the lower level of the canal
to the summit, it was abandoned at the turn of the cen¬
tury because of mechanical breakdowns and the
expense of maintaining a head of steam all day. Now
only the massive foundations of the power house and
the inclined plane can be seen, fast being swallowed up
by a tangle of undergrowth.

107

Photo by Dr, J. M. Woolley (Dyestuffs Division

Pothole, Casterton Fell, North Lancashire